The Importance of End to End Encryption

The Importance of End to End Encryption

Encrypted communications are everywhere, from online banking to chat apps like WhatsApp. Put simply, encryption scrambles a communication or data transfer to stop people other than its intended recipient from reading it if they intercept it.

Today’s end-to-end encryption is incredibly secure because it encodes data using a key which can only be unlocked by the recipient. The actual process of encrypting the message is a series of digital handshakes which is near-impossible to crack because a fresh set of keys and locks are produced whenever the two users communicate.

Why is End to End Encryption Important?

As applications put more information online, including personal media, messages and financial data, apps which fail to protect this data from theft do so at their users’ peril. Massive hacks and data leaks like with 200 Million accounts Yahoo disaster make it clear that your users’ data can always be leaked online. Fortunately, end to end encryption provides your users with such strong protection that even states are concerned about their inability to decode it in their fight against terrorism.

Internal bad actors and misconfigured security are two of the most common ways that an app’s data is exposed. In fact, almost 90% of data breaches are caused by developer error, not cyberattacks. In other words, with the complexity of today’s dev stacks, it’s almost impossible to build a breach-proof product. End to end encryption provides a solution which protects user data from these accidental and deliberate data breaches because unauthorized access or leaks of the data discloses nothing more than encrypted and meaningless data-strings.

Closing Remarks

In summary, with end to end encryption built into your mobile app you can sleep easy knowing that even if someone somewhere makes a mistake or you get hacked, there is no better way to protect your app and its users.